There's a small chance the election will be fought between Nicki Haley and Michelle Obama yet! Just a small chance.
Zero, not small. Zero.
Yes, and Scarlett Johansson might take me out on a date tonight. 🤔
What poster here has dismissed Trump's winning? I don't recall anyone. However, what people rightly point out is that Trump has been effectively campaigning for the last 3 years and yet still faces a not insignificant portion of his party (40% in the last primary) that doesn't want him.
Of course, the vast majority of those will vote for him as the GOP nominee, but it raises the question as to how he is going to win over independents, and those who opted to vote for Biden last time when he couldn't convince his party.
And yes, Trump got 74m votes, but lost by something like 7m. What has he done to get those voters on his side? Nothing. The only play they seem to have is that Biden is terrible. But al that does it then get people to try to work out which is the least bad option.
And any independent or critical thinker can see that whatever faults Biden may have, they are nothing compared to the faults that Trump has.
And therein lies the real problem for Trump. He won in 2016 based largely on a desire for something new (which he isn't anymore) and a huge amount of anti-HC sentiment. While Biden may not be popular, he is not the divisive figure that HC was. In fact, Trump has now taken on that mantle.
The recent results seem to suggest that the polls are overestimating the support for Trump.
The entire party is now MAGA. The old GOP is dead, likely never to be seen again.
There's more chance of me flying to the moon with Keanu Reeves than the above happening.
So you're saying I have a chance with Scarlett....?
Zero. She's married to Colin Jost (lucky SOB)
Fancy my chances with Paddy Power and bet on Donald and do Euro millions bet at same time.Donald will win
Yeah, it certainly seems that way. I can't think of a peaceful way that the pandora's box of Trumpism can be closed in a short space of time. People say that MAGA are only a minority of the overall party base, and this could well be true, but if it is true, then they've done an absolutely bang-up job of cowing the rest of the party into submission.
Consider the scene: it's 2046 and President Vivek Ramaswamy and his Vice President Lauren Boebert are celebrating their second inauguration, having routed the Dumbass Loser Party (named changed by order of the Supreme Court) in all 50 states. Voter registration now limited to those who failed to graduate high school, who own guns and who drive pickups. The 100 meter high solid gold statue of Donald Trump beams down approvingly from atop the rotunda of the Capitol dome while the MAGA Army salute. Target practice on refugees takes place on the White House lawns. Abortion providers heads are placed on every railing. All school geography textbooks no longer show a place that old-timers hesitantly refer to as 'Yurrop'. Things are, officially, Great.
If that were true he would be winning primaries with 90%+ and he's nowhere close to managing that.
I'd split the current GOP support into 3 roughly equal groups.
You've got the true believer MAGA acolytes , hat wearing, rally attending loons who will vote for Trump no matter what.
You've got the "Hyper conservatives" that have bought into the "deep state" idea and that the election was stolen , but aren't full blown cult members (yet) who would vote for a Trump alternative that agrees with them if available.
And then you have the remnants of the "Party of Reagan" who really don't know what they are supposed to do. They don't want to vote for Trump but they aren't really sure they can quite bring themselves to vote Democrat - Kennedy maybe gives them an out.
Always good craic when Michael Che starts making jokes at Josts expense.
Well that "rule" was well and truly broken in 2016 when Comey announced an investigation into Hilary's emails or whatever.
hope you didn't have to use a full box of Kleenex while writing that one handed
Whoever believes the US 2020 election was stolen is basically in the cult. They may just not be as demonstrative as those wearing the red hats and so on. It's been debunked as much as something can be debunked via recounts, audits and court cases that went precisely nowhere. If anyone still believes it, then it's more of an article of faith than a reasonable conclusion based on evidence. They need that to be true.
There are various Trump alternatives out there. Nikki Haley is campaigning right now. They parrot many of his ideas (even the thoroughly asinine one above) while trying to present themselves as respectable, so there's scope for 2 3rds of the overall party base to outvote MAGA in pretty much every state, but this has absolutely not happened. Trump's control of the party and share of the primary vote has only increased despite him getting worse.
The ones to be worried about are the people who know full well it wasn't stolen, but still faithfully parrot the lie.
I think a sizeable minority of stop the steal crowd are the crazy true-believers. For the majority, as ever with Republicans, I read it as a dog whistle. By stolen election they mean the rules were changed allowing black people to vote too easily.
They may be morally worse, but anyone saying the election was stolen and is acting on that basis is bad enough.
"Our leverage in elections goes up as the voting populous goes down!"
I was listening to the Hacks on Tap podcast this morning and they had Sarah Longwell who is a political strategist.
She was saying what Haley does after she drops out could have a massive impact in November.
If she doesnt endorse Trump it really gives her supporters genuine reason not to vote for him but if she does endorse him (more than likely as she said she would in the past) then her supporters will probably all come back to him even though many stated they wouldnt vote for him over the last few weeks.
Define “walloped” when he keeps underperforming by double digit points spread from what polls say he should be pulling in
To think about this another way - has there ever been a primary where the loser did not row in behind the winner? Haley is a politician, she will do the political thing.
(ironically, probably the only candidate who would be an exception to this would be Trump - if he lost, which he won't, but imagine the scenes if he did)
Well, Mitch McConnell is in talks to endorse Trump despite Trump having written (and I quote),
"Does Coco Chow have anything to do with Joe Biden's Classified Documents being sent and stored in Chinatown?", referring to Mitch McConnell's wife Elaine Chao, who is originally from China. The fact that McConnell has to have talks with Trump about the endorsement, despite being at the heart of the establishment of the same party whose voters Trump is wildly popular with should tell us a lot about the amount of personal antipathy McConnell must regard Trump with.
Trump also took a dig at Nikki Haley's spouse. Come to think of it, he did this with Ted Cruz, too. Oh, and didn't he say something about Ron DeSantis's mijssus as well? I forget exactly, because apparently he does it so much that it's hard to keep track of when he said what about who.
The thing is that all of Trump's rivals who want to retain some kind of political career basically have to stand there and take his jabs. It must really eat them up in private. Who many of Trump's victims have had fantasies about chinning him out of his shoes?
I would guess 'all of them' is the answer to that question.
But how many elected GOP officials have been willing to sacrifice their career on the altar of staking out a moral position against Trump? Liz Cheney and I guess you could argue Mitt Romney...and a few more who just quietly retired (remember Jeff Flake for example).
But anyone who wanted to continue to be a force in politics bowed the knee to Trump. That's the reality, whatever they might think or say in private.
Party before everything, even if you personally have to eat a giant sh1t sandwich.
It's a cult.
Oh I am pretty sure she will too.
She is careful enough in saying that he cant beat Biden and not that he shouldnt be on the ticket as he is a rapist and has all these charges against him.
Trump tries to do what Zuckerberg did
The presumptive Republican nominee absolutely RANTING about jokes make at his expense on a late night TV show.
Yes, yes. Quite stable.
